Cognitive research has shown that the human brain processes images quicker than it processes words, and images are more likely than text to remain in long-term memory. With the expansion of technology that allows people from all walks of life to create and share photographs with a few clicks, the world seems to value visual media more than ever…

International business communication is associated with cultural norms of both native and non-native business counterparts. It seems that the study of culture presentation from the perspective of English as a lingua franca in business English textbooks has been rather underexplored. To this end, cultural contents in two internationally distributed…

Investigations into the use of private speech by adult English foreign language (EFL) learners in regulating their mental activities have been an interesting area of research with a sociocultural framework. Following this line of research, 30 advanced adult EFL learners were selected via the administration of Oxford quick placement test and took a…

Kumaravadivelu's (2003) introduction and development of "postmethod" led to the demise of methods and a dramatic change in the language teaching profession. In fact, it can be claimed that the arrival of postmethod pedagogy in language teaching might be the reason for the abandonment and replacement of method by context sensitive,…

The Korean government implemented several educational policies to enhance internationalization of higher education such as deregulation of higher education, classroom instructions in English, and faculty publications in international refereed journals. However, the speed of globalization has been lagging behind (Green, 2015). Alternatively, this…

This study reports on an action research on increasing the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students' confidence in speaking. Participants involved in this study were 16 male university students who had an upper-intermediate level of English. Extra speaking activities were incorporated into the classroom for 8 successive weeks. Insights into…

This study aimed to discover semantic and syntactic problems Persian native speakers might have while reading English and Persian texts and different strategies they use to overcome those problems. To this end, a convenient sample of 40 intermediate students studying English Literature at Shiraz University was selected. Twenty of them were asked…

Achieving the maximum efficiency in teaching a second language (L2) has always been an important issue for educators. Current globalization processes, development of international business relations, political integrations among the various countries throughout the world, and the abilities of latest information and communications technologies…

Teaching creatively in ESP might in certain cases present some appropriate solutions to the teaching situation and, more importantly, boost students' confidence and motivation towards achieving some of the course objectives. Based on a case study, this paper displays some of the results obtained through a limited scope research conducted with…

Theoretical and empirical data support that the feedback given in small group activities promote second language acquisition. There are many studies that have examined the impact of interaction on second language acquisition in controlled language situations. This study examines the small group activity "conversation partner" in order to…

Specificity, as a dimension of cognitive construal, refers to the capacity of a speaker to describe an entity or a situation in different accuracy and details (Langacker, 2008), which is linguistically reflected in lexical and grammatical levels (Wen, 2012). Modifiers can extend a simple sentence into a long and complicated one (Weng, 2007),…

Travelling from Hong Kong to Dimen, China, requires a full day. Creating and implementing an original course to teach English as a foreign language in rural China offered to some of the university's most talented undergraduates the opportunity to integrate hands-on learning with scholarship, cross-cultural understanding, and community service. At…

Diverse groups of newcomer immigrant students enter high schools in the United States each year. When their numbers are small, their unique journeys to integration in school and in the receiving country remain often invisible. Focusing on six newcomer-underrepresented students, this paper examines elements of their complex pathways to social…

It is common knowledge that hedging devices as a rhetorical technique common in all persuasive writing are considerably important in scientific discourse, for they are tools which facilitate presenting claims or arguments in a polite, acceptable and respectful manner. In addition, they are discoursal resources available to a scientific writer's…

It cannot be said that education today in institutions is better than the previous century. Because in the past, students' minds were not as full of time-consuming things like spending enormous time in front of a computer or a television as today. Subsequently, teachers used to concentrate their job well and students used to focus on the study…